Magick for Dummies
For the most part, creating magical effects with the Mage system is very simple, but is also somewhat tricky. Raw Power First off: No matter what you're doing, how many Spheres you're utilizing, what you're targeting, if you're wearing a hat with blinking lights or are dancing around naked and screaming, you will only be rolling your Arete to determine the effect created. Just Arete. Now here's where it gets tricky. Depending on if the magic is Coincidental (that is, easily believable as 'normal' should a mundane spot you doing it), Vulgar (flying in the face of reality itself), with or without witnesses, and the number of Spheres involved, the difficulty of the roll will vary wildly. Baseline difficulties are as follow: ;Coincidental Magic:Difficulty = Highest Sphere used + 3 ;Vulgar Magic (No Sleeper witnesses): Difficulty = Highest Sphere used + 4 ;Vulgar Magic (Sleeper witnesses): Difficulty = Highest Sphere used + 5 You may spend Quintessence to lower your difficulty on a one-for-one basis, to a maximum of 3. Keep in mind that to draw Quintessence from an outside source to directly fuel an effect requires Prime3. Other modifiers to difficulty could be anything from a noisy and distracting situation (which would make it worse) to having meditated and reached a well-balanced state for an hour beforehand (which would make it easier). Total modifiers for any given effect cannot exceed 3, in either direction. Thus, the difficulty for a vulgar Forces2 effect without witnesses would never be lower than 3 and never higher than 9 (2 + 4 = 6 for base difficulty, then +/- 3). Versatility Your Sphere rankings do nothing except tell you the breadth of effects you can generate. They reflect what your Mage has learned about the way reality and magic work, and how to influence them. For example: Having Forces2, for instance, means that you understand the various forces of the universe enough that you can nudge the simpler ones around a bit, but you can't yet create them. They have to be there in the first place for you to play with. This is not a limit on what you can do with those forces. While the more complex forces are still outside your understanding, simple things like electricity, fire, cold, etc. are well within your grip. So yes, you can throw lightning if you've got a source of electricity (any source). However, one must consider the risks of such vulgar acts of magic (see: Paradox). By Rote As their name implies, rotes are simply a self-imposed pattern used as something of a recipe for magical effects. They are by no means required to create magical effects. There are no "spells" in this system. However, if your Mage has a particular method he likes to use for, say, scanning a room for life-signs using Life1 and Correspondence1, that could be a rote. The most effect a rote will have versus a seat-of-your-pants casting is maybe a lessening in difficulty, due to it being an old, familiar, and practiced process for the Mage in question. Asking for Trouble Reality doesn't take kindly to being molded like clay, and resists it. This resistance is known among Mages as Paradox and it sucks. It can kill, or worse (yes, there's worse, trust us). Generally speaking, the more "wrong" a magical effect is in regards to the reality it's being created within, the worse the Paradox. Coincidental effects might not even incur Paradox at all, while wildly vulgar effects in front of mundane witnesses run the risk of not only failing outright but utterly destroying the caster in the process (and sometimes a good chunk of the surrounding scenery, as Reality seeks to erase every hint of the "wrongness"). Needless to say, most Mages do their utmost to avoid this stuff. Category:Reference